By Phil Albro Warning: What follows is opinion. Nobody has to accept it!
Lately I've been hearing from people who take the opposite tack from those who never have enough evidence to feel confident about their genealogical data. The attitude I'm seeing reminds me of what the judge told the jury (including me) during my first jury experience – “You, the jury, will determine the truth of this matter.”
No, we won't! No, we didn't! We determined the immediate fate of the defendant. We were convinced by the arguments of one of the lawyers, and that's all! The truth does not derive from the opinion of a committee, nor even that of a judge! The truth is whatever it is. The judge and the jury attempt to find out what the truth is, and what ever they conclude, will be TREATED as though it were the truth. It may be, and it may not be the actual truth. It may be the truth, and yet what it TREATED as true may be reversed by a higher court. Or it may be not the truth, yet a higher court upholds it. None of this changes what the truth actually is.
Two debating teams debate. One is judged to have “won,” so the position they supported is TREATED as true. All that says is, they were the better debaters. They did a better job of presenting a convincing argument. That can't change the real truth!
SO DOES IT MATTER WHETHER THE OFFICIAL CONCLUSION MATCHES THE REAL TRUTH? After all, the official conclusion will be TREATED as the truth in all respects, whether it is actually the truth or not.
If you are the one judged to have committed a crime, your reputation is destroyed, your family is humiliated, and YOU DIDN'T DO IT!, then I suspect you would easily see that yes, it most certainly does matter whether the official conclusion corresponds to the real truth or not. I used a courtroom setting as an example, in order to have something dramatic and rather obvious to start from.
So, does it matter whether what you claim in your family history is the truth or not? For example, can you knowingly lie to make sure no one is embarrassed? If you take this embarrassing story (that you have validated) and include it, but “revised” so it is no longer embarrassing, you have demonstrated a disregard and disrespect for truth that would make most people who do value truth not want to read your book. The world tends to believe that someone who would lie in a little would lie in a lot. Your whole book becomes untrustworthy. Your work becomes unaccepted, hence essentially pointless. I happen to believe that the consequences of the truth are always more likely, in the long run, to be desirable than are the consequences of a lie.
How about an omission? Can you simply neglect to report something obviously embarrassing to someone's descendants? I would have to answer this one with another question – how do you know this embarrassing “fact” is true? Somebody said it was. If that's all you have, that makes it gossip by definition. Surely you have no requirement to report gossip as history! But if you follow up and find strong evidence that it is indeed true, then you have a dilemma. You are in a moral and ethical gray area.
You may see this as a practical rather than primarily an ethical issue. In that case, the alternative with the least unpleasant consequences would be to simply leave this story out altogether. Nobody can tell you what you “have” to include in a family history. If you don't feel like including something, then don't! That's your right as an author!
O.K., how about mistakes and unintentional errors? You report claims that have supporting evidence, but some of them happen to be incorrect. Some of the incorrect claims become known to be incorrect as a result of additional research, and the rest never do. Are you at fault? You may be, but you don't have to be. First, there are those parts of your family history where contradictory claims have been made. All you have to do is say so! Point out that there is a difference of opinion on that part. If you like, review the evidence for each of the conflicting claims. You are not able to “prove” one side right and the other(s) wrong, so don't give the impression you can.
Second, there will be places where your research convinces you of something, but you know the evidence is less solid than you would like. That makes the “something” a guess. An informed guess, but still a guess. Say so! Tell why you think the guess is correct, but label it speculation anyway. "John's killer was Alphonso." may or may not be true. "I believe John's killer was Alphonso, for the following reasons:" is the truth. It states that you believe something that you do in fact believe, but it doesn't claim that what you believe has been proven. Then when you give your reasons, you are giving the reader a good jumping off point for further research.
There are scientific principles that deal with “justifiable belief”, that is, principles that let you decide which of various claims you would be justified in believing. One of the better known principles is “Occam's Razor.” This says, if several possible explanations for an observation exist, you should believe the one that requires the fewest untestable assumptions. For example, suppose there are conflicting claims to the effect that (a) Bridget's father was Claud, or (b) Bridget's father was Henry. Suppose in order for Bridget's father to have been Claud, Claud would have had to have an out-of-wedlock child at age 14, he would have had to be in a town he is not known to have ever been in, and this blue eyed, blond man would have had to have a brown eyed, brunette daughter by her blue eyed, blond mother Stephanie. On the other hand Henry, a brown eyed, black haired resident of the town in question, was four years older than Claud. If the father must have been one of these two, you would not be justified in believing it was Claud because there are too many untestable assumptions there. Note that Claud is not ruled out, merely the least likely by Occam's Razor. If you say it was probably Henry in your family history, it is unproven, but a justified assumption.
Finally, the end of the world hasn't come yet. There have been countless tomorrows, and no cases where tomorrow never came, so far. You would not be justified in believing there will be no tomorrow, today. So ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING in your family history could be turned on its ear by some completely unexpected and unpredictable discovery in somebody's attic tomorrow. This makes every family history a “presumptive document.” What you put in there is presumed to be correct unless irrefutable evidence to the contrary turns up in the future. Some people need a disclaimer like this, because they never question anything that has been published. If you like it, use it! Why? Because the truth matters.